• Site: FATE
• Publisher: Encore
• Developer: WildTangent
• Genre: Role-Playing Game

By Brad Cook

Urban planning has never been Grove’s strong suit. The idyllic town is nestled deep in a tranquil forest, but along its eastern border stands the forbidding Dungeon Gate, beyond which lie dozens (some even say millions) of levels of subterranean horrors. During the long, frigid winters, the townspeople regale each other with tales of the adventurers who braved those depths during the previous year. Some returned battle-hardened and much wealthier. Most were never seen again.

With your trusty pet by your side, you arrive in Grove to test your mettle and amass more riches than anyone before you. Don your armor, pick up your weapon, and learn your spells in preparation to fight orcs, goblins, skeletons, dragons, and over 100 other denizens of the depths.

Questing

Choose one of four levels of difficulty, customize your character’s appearance, and decide whether you want a dog or a cat to accompany you. Your pet helps you fight monsters, but if its health drops too low, it runs away and waits for you to heal it. Make sure you buy a fishing pole from one of the vendors in Grove and go fishing in town — or in the dungeon — every chance you get. Feed a fish to your pet to temporarily transform it into a more powerful creature, such as a tarantula or a gargoyle.

Grove’s vendors are happy to sell you weapons, armor, magical scrolls and gems, restorative potions, and other necessities for your adventures. In return, they’ll purchase any unwanted items you bring back from the dungeon’s depths; don’t forget to use your pet’s inventory slots to increase the amount of stuff you can carry.

When you start a new game, the wizard Bremen tells you of a monster in the dungeon who must be defeated; its name, type, and location change each time. However, the creature is always a very powerful one that lives many levels below the ground, so first you’ll need to speak with various villagers to obtain easier quests. As you complete tasks for them, such as retrieving lost family heirlooms, they’ll reward you with precious objects and experience points.

You also accumulate experience and fame points by defeating monsters. When you earn enough experience, you gain a new level and increase your strength, dexterity, vitality, and magic abilities, while new fame levels allow you to enhance your weapon and spell skills. While FATE doesn’t ask you to choose a character class, such as wizard or warrior, how you develop your abilities and skills allows you to focus on one area or opt for a balanced approach. Don’t forget that your pet receives experience points and becomes more powerful too.

Your Destiny

The more powerful you become, the more ways you can tweak a character to your liking. For example, many weapons and pieces of armor contain slots where you can place gems that confer offensive and defensive bonuses. If you recover a gem-encrusted item in the dungeon and decide you don’t want it but desire its jeweled bonuses — or the opposite — look for Gann Gar and Samwen in Grove. The former can retrieve the gems, but will render the object useless, while the latter can restore the item’s sockets, which destroys the gems.

After you complete Bremen’s quest, you can continue your adventures by picking up new assignments from the townspeople, who seem to have ever-escalating problems, or you can retire your character. Retirement allows you to create a descendant who inherits one object as an heirloom and begins her story at level two. Your character’s exploits also bestow his descendant with enough fame points for a higher level of renown. Future descendants get the advantage of earning higher and higher levels of experience and renown before they set foot in the dungeon.

Thus you write your exploits in Grove’s history books, establishing a lineage of brave adventurers whose stories will be told on those frosty evenings for many decades to come.

It’s a Dog-Eat-Cat World. A boy and his dog take on a vampire and its tiger.

A Smashing Success. Critical Strike is the perfect skill to perfect if you want to be a fierce warrior.

Health … Diminishing … Must … Keep … Fighting. The green bar on the left means that not only is your health low, but you’re suffering from poison too. You have plenty of mana, but that wraith is tough to beat with magic.

FATE Bonus Pack

FATE includes the bonus pack, which brings additional weapons, armor, and 3 new monsters to battle.

If you liked this game, check out:

• Dungeon Siege
• Neverwinter Nights 2

System Requirements:

• Mac OS X version 10.4
• Intel processor
• 256MB of RAM
• 32MB video RAM
• 200MB hard disk space